Jack Engelhard’s classic international bestselling novel Indecent Proposal, which later became a worldwide hit movie, has been republished to meet readers’ demands. His other major works include Compulsive: A Novel, his award-winning post-Holocaust Montreal memoir Escape from Mount Moriah, plus Slot Attendant: A Novel About A Novelist. His website: www.jackengelhard.com

The “shelter-in-place” imperative due to the Virus is taking a toll even upon the rich and famous.

The usual people who show up on my TV don’t look the same all of a sudden. They don’t look so good, either.

In other words, we’re finding out what these media notables are really like when they first get out of bed, which is never a pleasant sight, for any us. But we are not stars. They require two hours of pampering and with help from teams of hairdressers and make-up specialists, only then are they ready for their close-ups.

The suave George Stephanopoulos, ABC’s top anchorman…well, not so suave speaking from his basement, and without a barber to style his hair.

Upon casual inspection, they look no better than you or me without professional blandishments, nor do they appear smarter than the rest of us when they come across so ORDINARY. I’m thinking Fox News’ Chris Wallace. Broadcasting from his bunker, this anti-Israel/anti-Trump slippery mouth is the picture of a man pleading for rescue from a hostage video. Gone is that resolute presence. Likewise, the entire gang at CNN and MSNBC.

We always suspected that there was less to them than meets the eye, but now we know. This goes for the lot of them whose preening so many viewers mistook for wisdom. Just now, for example, another “expert” on my TV is trending what appears to be the new Coronavirus consensus, which is that “the elderly” and those with Just now, for example, another “expert” on my TV is trending what appears to be the new Coronavirus consensus, which is that “the elderly” and those with “preexisting conditions” ought to be “left to die.”“preexisting conditions” ought to be “left to die.”

Gee, thanks, but in Judaism we “choose life.” That’s how we trend…since Moses.

Who are these people who so blithely take us back to Sodom, where such practices were common? Let’s just call them preexisting idiots.

Apparently, there is no vaccine for that condition.

Yes, this is who they are without studio teleprompters and without the glow from cosmetics.

It’s been weeks now, and everybody is having a bad hair day.

TV glitterati and even movie stars I have known could be quite plain when stripped of their make-up, and some of them I hardly recognized, unprepped.

No man is a hero to his valet, and this is especially true these days when we encounter a new set of heroes.

Health-care workers are deservedly cheered, and the sanitation men and women who pick up our garbage also rate our salutes, and they wear no rouge or lipstick.

We can’t all look like George Clooney and he does not look so terrific, either, under the circumstances… which are pretty much the same in Israel, though, if our understanding is correct, restrictions over there are being lifted at perhaps a quicker pace than what we are experiencing in the United States.

That could be because the Israelis responded to the crisis as FAMILY.

In both places, my finding is that people are behaving much more neighborly than in the past – the past being anything that happened two months ago.

Over in Israel it’s Shalom. Over here it’s Howdy, even to people we don’t know.

On the subject of beauty, nothing says it better than the moment I caught in Jerusalem for the camera of my mind, of a strapping young IDF kid helping a Holocaust survivor cross the street. He rushed from his military vehicle to do this. Nothing much, some might say. Especially since it happens every day. But for me it defined Israel, and it captured the heart and essence of the people, and of a Land that keeps its promise.

So I was not quick enough to capture a snap shot, but the memory of it helps soften the confinement blues as I “shelter in place,” bad hair day and all.

He wrote the worldwide book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal,” and the authoritative newsroom epic, “The Bathsheba Deadline,” followed by his coming-of-age classics, “The Girls of Cincinnati,” and, the Holocaust-to-Montreal memoir, “Escape from Mount Moriah,” for which contemporaries have hailed him “The last Hemingway, a writer without peer, and the conscience of us all.” Website: www.jackengelhard.com